This isn't what leave and cleave means...

Leave and cleave has taken on a new meaning in the past few days.

All of my life I have dreamed of my wedding day. In all of those dreams there were certain parts that always looked the same.

My dad walking me down the aisle. My mother smiling through happy tears as I take my vows.

My parents have made the decision to boycott my wedding.

This may be the most terrible loss of my life. It's like both of your parents committing suicide on the same day and leaving you a letter that says it's your fault.

I don't understand how we got here, and I don't know where we go from here. I feel like my parents love was conditional upon whether I allowed them to call the shots.

I have tried desperately to make peace, and it seemed the only thing that would appease their anger over the past few months was to cancel the wedding and eliminate my fiance from my life.

The weird part is that he's never mistreated me or been disrespectful to them. He's met every request that they have had. Once they decided he was not up to their standard, there was nothing that would sway them.

I believe it's normal for parents to have reservations about the mates their children choose, and I believe it's important for parents to make those reservations known. I believe this situation has been far from normal and their opposition has been far from reasonable.

I feel bullied and confused. I feel like they are throwing a massive temper tantrum and holding their breath to force me to give them their way.

I'm not trying to be unreasonable or disrespectful of their place in my life. I haven't known what to do.

The only thing I know to do is move forward on my future, with or without them. I'll forgive and leave the door open to a future relationship with them.

I do see this as an intentional and hostile ultimatum, and I'm not going to be intimidated and bullied into any decision. They can be in my life and respect my decision, or they can throw a fit and abandon me.

Yesterday, I had my first wedding shower. It was in my hometown and hosted at my sister's house, just blocks away from my parents home.
My mother did not come.

I didn't realize until the shower was almost an hour in progress that she really was not coming. My mother was not coming to my wedding shower.

I drove five hours to get to my sister's house with two of my bridesmaids Friday night to be here. This shower was for local connections, mostly from a decade or more back, and for my mother's friends. My mother did not come.

You might wonder why I would be surprised that she didn't come when I was told she would not come. I thought I had done my crying and had prepared myself as much as I could. But apparently, the trusting little girl who has always had such faith in the love of her parents expected that when the story played out, her mommy would come. That love would prevail. That her mommy would come.

But she didn't.

And that means that this little girl has to really try to prepare herself to not have her daddy walk her down the aisle and not have her mommy lovingly caress her and kiss her cheek on the most important day of her life. Because they said they weren't coming.

And unless there is a miracle, it looks like they won't be coming. And that they won't be there to kiss her babies. And they won't be there.

Engagement photos

I've been waiting for months to get our engagement photos done. Every time we scheduled it, the weather was crazy or some other crazy thing came up. (Read: We couldn't agree on what he would wear or where we would go to take them. He didn't understand why he couldn't wear whatever he wanted and why we weren't going to take them at the Cowboy Stadium or Rangers Ballpark. *cough*)

So today, with no argument about the engagement picture wear or where, and no crazy weather, we finally got to have a photo shoot.

Morning time

My beloved starts his new job today and we're really gonna see how car sharing with two addresses really works now. Things are about to get alot more interesting!

Today, he had to be at his job at 9am and so did I. I live in Fort Worth. He is in Arlington. I work in Arlington, and he works in Fort Worth. How convenient.

We pretty much make a big circle. I leave the house by 7:15. I pick him up. He drops me off. He drives to his work. He gets off two hours before me, so that should not be a hard part of the day. If there were no traffic, the whole trip might only take an hour. But obviously, that's only a dream that there would never be traffic.

Life will get easier once we're married for so many logistics reasons and probably harder in others.

I think one thing I'm learning in this process is a new level of teamwork. I was on my own for so long, and made all my own decisions always. I didn't consult anyone on anything unless I chose to. If I made a mistake, I dealt with it on my own.

At first, I thought I would only involve him in what I wanted to and continue to control what I thought was working already for me. Adding another person changes everything! Nothing that works for you as a single works for you as a couple.

I have to let him be a real part of the team.

We learned really quickly that we couldn't just mix our finances a little. Holy sweet Jesus! Disaster!

But we're learning. I'm learning that I have to trust him to put us ahead of himself, and that I might be the one that has the most trouble thinking of us first. I find myself wanting to be selfish and even sneaky about purchases, and justifying my actions to myself. Then I get convicted about it and confess and he doesn't care. He has no desire to control me. I find myself going the "ask forgiveness instead of permission" route.

I'm learning teamwork and submission and humility from this marriage thing. It's not about me. Car sharing is best for us right now. I can't just pull the "It's my car. I make the payments." card every time I want my way. I have... but I'm learning.

I'm kind of a mess. I do not like to get up early. I will cut you if you make me get up early. (I'm gonna love parenting, right?) If you want to party until late at night, I'm your girl! But on this, I know it's important to be flexible.

I'm learning and I'm growing.

Wedding disasters

So far the wedding planning process has been eerily smooth. Part of that is that I've been in roughly one million weddings. I'm not saying there won't be a few details that won't come off right, but I'm saying that I might be better prepared than some.

The store where all the dresses are from notifies the bride whenever a bridesmaid dress comes in. Nifty! I got a notification yesterday of the second to last bridesmaid dress. I had confirmed that the late bridesmaid had an appointment Friday to order hers.

I texted her when I got the email that she was the only naked bridesmaid, and she freaked out! She thought I was telling her she was too late.

I was at work and didn't see that I had caused her angst right away, so she called the bridal shop. They confirmed that it was too late to order the dress! Nooooooooo!

They found one, so we're good. She was certain I would commit justifiable homicide over this, but I have laughed off and on ever since.

Of mice and men

Yesterday, I tried on the full slip my friend loaned me to go under my bridal gown.

Doorway man looked at me, puzzled.

"Is that for the wedding? It's pretty!" With lots of enthusiasm.

Awww... Bless his heart.

Sasquatch gear

By the time I was in fifth grade, I was pretty much full grown. I measured at 5'8" while trying to slump to close the gap between myself and all the other little kids my age. I was truly closer to 5'10" When I became an adult and stopped trying to force myself to scoliosis to be shorter. I wore a size 10 shoe by the time I was out of third grade. I'm a big girl.

I always said I wanted to marry a "wall of man" jokingly seriously. When I met doorway man, I was taken aback by his overall size. At a staggering 6'7" with oversized shoulders even for a person of that height, his size impresses people in general. He's often good advertising for the Nissan Versa we drive. One less than tactful man at a fast food restaurant equated seeing him get out of that car with "clowns getting out of a toy car". Doorway man is not the least bit phased by these types of interactions and easily joins in on the humor of his size.

So needless to say, being able to be petite next to him has been surprisingly fun for me. Something about it makes me feel more feminine and delicate, which is not a common feeling when one towers over many men and most women.

Last week my doorway man was hired on with a security company. They called him in the following day and they have a reasonably specific dress code. Solid white tshirt. Black pants. All black tennis shoes. Black socks.

Cool! All we needed were the shoes. That's a pretty standard thing. We should be able to find those...

We went to the Mecca of tennis shoes, because I figured they would have a grand selection of shoes we could choose from.

Apparently, not in a 15 wide. Poor doorway man. We could only find one black pair in the store that even fit him, and they weren't solid black. He had to contact his boss with the sad story and get approval to wear shoes that weren't quite right. They thankfully had pity on our plight, and approved them. I'm not sure what we would have done if they hadn't.

Anybody know of any sasquatch shoe stores in DFW?

Building a life and home

Engagement is a wonderful time, full of discovery and new experiences.

There are things that you look forward to when you wait till you are 36 to get married. You look forward to not having to wear a dress that someone else selected in a color or shape that is horrifically unappealing to a wedding. You also look forward to the gift registry. At this point, you have spent a fortune on wedding gifts for other people while using knives you bought at the dollar store.

I was excited. My love and I were going to go to the big house store and dream about our life and home while shooting the labels of everything our little hearts desired. It was going to be this awesome bonding experience and we would walk out of the store holding hands and smiling as we dreamed and loved and dreamed some more...

That's what I thought would happen.
That's not how it went.

I should preface this story with a little background info on myself and my beloved.

We were raised very differently. Besides the difference between male and female, we were raised in quite different socioeconomic backgrounds. I was raised with more than enough of just about everything. He was not. Our definitions of what we need to start our lives together is very, very different.

As I skipped thru the front of the big house store with butterflies resting on my hair and shoulders and pixie dust sparkling around my gracefully dancing feet, much like the beginning sequence to a song in a romantic musical... I am warming up for a clicky gun extravaganza of epic proportions.

I had patiently waited even to look online, because this was something I really wanted us to do together. I wanted to really experience this together.

We are making a life and a home together. It's beautiful.

I headed straight for the bedding to pick the bedspread that I would someday stare at tiny baby fingers and toes and snuggle out bad dreams and have hours of tickle fights on. As I raised the gun to the tag of the lucky choice, my dreams cracked like a smelly, rotten egg on my head ran down my body in a bubbling, slimy poison of my girlish fantasy with the words... "We don't need that. It's $250. For a blanket. I'll bring my blanket from home." (Imagine that last line with the effect of a recording played back very slowly.)

With almost every attempt to select an item, I was met with lines of reason and practicality, such as... "Where are we going to put that?"... "Don't you already have that in a different color?"... And other horrific things that I've blocked from my memory.

This man who looks at me like he would tame the ocean at my whim or catch me a falling star to put in my hair... was saying words I not only had not heard him say to me, but could not comprehend.

In my shock and horror, I crumbled under the weight of my bitter disappointment.

I looked into the future and didn't like what I saw. No pretty, shiny things. Nothing unnecessary. Nothing frivolous.

This was not fun. And I was GOING TO CRY.

Crying is really not my thing. Do not be deceived. All this wedding business has cracked thru a really tough shell and reduced me to an emotional wreck. Crying at chick flicks, hallmark commercials, inspirational posters... I've spent a lifetime building up an immunity to the stuff that makes other girls cry.

But I was going to cry. It was inevitable. And he had no idea what he'd done. He was going to find out, though.

So we got in the car, and drove in almost complete silence to take him home and then I would go home and cry.

I later explained in a more rational emotional state what had transpired to the clueless man to whom I am betrothed. When he realized what he'd done, he showed the proper amount of remorse and tenderness.

And we agreed that I would complete the registry by myself and let him pick out a few sports things for his man room as payment for his silence.

76 days...

At this point in the wedding planning process, we are in the phase I want to get out of as soon as possible. We don't live together, we are both working, and we are sharing a car. Oh yeah, and I'm planning our wedding. Yesterday, I ran all over the DFW metro area running errands that I have been putting off.

I love the diy part of planning this wedding so much more than I ever would have thought. I started my pinterest page when I realized I was going to be getting engaged about 8 or 9 months ago under the guise of helping my friend June Bug plan her June wedding.

So far, I've made my bouquets, my garter, my unity candle, my table decorations, a hair fascinator, and part of my bridesmaid gifts. It's been a great distraction from some of the drama that has surrounded the wedding.

At this point, I'm working on an elaborate tablecloth embellishment for the bride and groom reception table. I'm trying to make about fifty handmade satin flowers that will cascade down the front of the table to the floor.

I think all weddings should have one ridiculous project that is really time consuming and endless. As in, if I need stress relief from all the emotional drama, I can pull out my candle and melt some satin into a flower (Fire!) and I can stop at fifty flowers, or I can make a thousand if I need to. Whatever level of catharsis I need, that's how many flowers I will make.

Let's just say there will probably be more than one table decorated with these.

Our first fight.

You know this is why you are reading. The drama. The twist to your oreo cookie.

Here goes...

Two months ago, I moved into a new apartment. With a lease term that was over five months before the wedding, we decided to go ahead and move me into a two bedroom apartment that we could live in until we are ready to buy a home. Neither of us are fond of moving, and we would soon find out why. (Read: We both suck at it.)

For me, although future Dh is disabled, he is very strong other than his lame leg, so I was very happy to have obligatory male help to move.

When you are a single woman who has moved roughly 4,388 times since moving out of my childhood home, moving is just a terrible thing. I learned a while back to just hire movers to move the big stuff and boxes. The problem that I'm finally willing to admit is this: I am incapable of packing for a move properly. In some ways, I'm very capable of organizing. With moving, I just can't do it. My "stuff that I'll just throw in a box when I clean after the movers leave" is always horribly underrated. Between this fact and future Dh not really being an expert at fully utilizing the available space in a Nissan Versa, this amounted to roughly 15 carloads of "stuff I'll throw in a box after the movers leave" that we moved ourselves.

I'm bad at moving. And painting. You should not ask me to help you. (Unless you want paint footprints on your floor and roller marks on your ceiling. Call me. I have a gift.)

So future Dh is really a good natured fellow. He smiled thru the pain in his lame leg and continuously told me how much he loved me, wouldn't let me carry heavy stuff, etc.

We were so tired when we decided to unpack some boxes in the kitchen.

(Cue suspense music)

When future Dh suggested that we put the pots and pans in the lower cabinets in the kitchen, we had a problem. You see, I have a really bad back that much of the time renders me unable to bend over, so I always put most of my most used dishes in high cabinets that I don't have to bend to get to.

I said: I need them where I can reach them when my back hurts.

He thought: Why would you be cooking when I can cook when your back hurts.

He said: You don't need to do that anymore.

I heard: I don't care if it hurts you.

Chaos ensues.

I have never been good at expressing myself in anger. Usually I cry before I can embarrass myself. Usually.

Not this time.

Future Dh stood in disbelief as the woman he loved...

You aren't ready. I can tell you aren't ready. Maybe I should end this post now.

Ok. I'll keep going.

I began to unravel as a human being.

At 36 years old, I began to throw a fit that would have shamed a two year old. I flung a pot lid at him and jumped up and down and squealed thru gritted teeth with eyes ablaze.

He stopped cold in his tracks, horrified... and probably instantly wondered if he really wanted to get married. Where the woman he loved once stood, stood a beast. An out of control fire pit of estrogen threatening to suck out his eyeballs.

He stood there stunned for a moment. Then he gently reached up and wrapped his giant hands around my flailing arms and pulled them down he leaned down to my face and said in a controlled, quiet tone.

"Do not throw things."

Instant shame. I then slipped into a crack in the floor and hid for the rest of my life, where I still hide to this day.

End of blog.

Nah... But it is the end of that story. And then we finished moving and I behaved. We're still getting married. Yay! 

A life of romance realized. Part 2

Although we had a rough start, there was something about him. A deep sweetness and tenderness that I couldn't seem to shake. He let the little boy in him show. There was a real beauty in the innocence of his heart. I saw it in little ways.

So many times, men are afraid to really smile. I'm not sure why, but they smile stiffly as if smiling makes them effeminate or weak. I guess when you are doorway man, no one questions your manhood over a smile lest they be crushed by the tip of a massive finger.

But he smiles without restraint, not in a creepy way, but like a kid opening Christmas presents. I like that. No, I love that.

As we got to know each other, he told me things of his childhood that would have made lesser people a slave to bitterness. Not him. He remembers the good parts of his interactions with people and the bad was just a moment of the whole timeline, a blip on the radar that is over now. Interesting... I can't do that. I wish I could be like that. We should all be like that.

After our first date, we mostly talked on the phone. We had a few meetings that he would call dates. I tried not to lead him on and was determined to redirect him to the friend zone.

He tried to kiss me on two different occasions, and both times he was met with a half step below self defense violence. (Future Dh claims he was reaching for his cell phone one of those times and grazed the side of my face with his lips.)

This inspired a talk that consisted of several rules.
1. You are to make no moves on me in the car. Closeness in proximity does not constitute an invitation.
2. At my house, we sit on separate couches unless I decide otherwise.
3. If you violate these rules, you will not see me again.

There. That's how it is. Deal with it, buddy.

The conversation above happened shortly before the first time he came to my house. We sat on separate couches awkwardly and the crickets chirped wildly.

A few days later, he called me. He sounded nervous. He said he noticed that I had alot of Asian stuff in my house and he had heard there was a cool Asian light festival in downtown Dallas. He asked me if I'd let him take me to it.

I had some friends who had seen it and said it was really a nice display and that I should go. I did want to go. Beyond that, something broke inside me. When you have pretty much only dated narcissistic psychopaths, you don't know how to process a development like this. I realized that I had never had a man that I dated do anything thoughtful for me... Ever. My dad is a good man, and has always looked for little ways to show his love for people that are important. I knew this was something very important to me but I didn't realize how much. This man cared for me. I wanted to be cared for.

I agreed to go with him, but I was still fighting, now internally, to keep him in the friend zone.

The day of the date to the light festival, I went and bought a new outfit from head to toe and got my hair done. I cut it from the middle of my back to a short pixie cut. I knew then that I was in trouble. I liked him. Alot.

I'm not sure how he did it. I was so sure he wasn't my type. The more I got to know him, the more I realized he was right for me.

I still struggled with the things that I had concerns about initially, but as time has gone on, I've seen that those things have not been that big of a deal.

To summarize, I taught him how to drive. It turns out that driving was not as difficult with his disability as he had been told it would be. And he has recently begun working and so far thinks he will enjoy it. When I realized that although he was raised Catholic, his values and beliefs are similar enough to mine, that was not as much of an issue. And... In seventy-six days he won't live with his mother.

Not that we don't have problems. We do. Thus the name of this blog.... Mauwwage for dummies.

The wedding is in 76 days, so I'm definitely not writing a how-to advice blog. If you came here for that.... RUN!!! I'm hoping to laugh at myself and chronicle our struggles as a newlywed couple in a lighthearted way.

I admit that I am too stupid to get married, but I think most people are. I'm sure there will be plenty to write about.

A life of romance realized. Part 1

My story...

At thirty-five and one month of age, I'd pretty much broken my own heart into a trillion pieces. I was raised in a very conservative Christian family, and my misunderstanding of what kind of mate God had for me had almost destroyed me. I have a very strong personality. I've been a prominent leader in almost every church I've attended since I was a child. While a strong personality is an asset as a leader, it can really be an issue when finding a mate. I'd always thought I needed a man with a stronger personality than mine to have a godly balance in my household in marriage. He had to play the alpha role if I was going please God. So I had a severely unsuccessful dating life full of insecure alphas, controlling abusers, and shameless cheaters. I didn't date much either, because finding someone that could "handle me" was a pretty specific bill.

Since I don't go to bars and church had proven to be a very bad place to meet men for me, I decided that I would see what the interwebs had to offer. After all, all good things are found online! So I took my strong and adventurous personality to the free dating site underworld.

I had some trial and error for about a year and a half getting to this point, but I hadn't been brutally murdered and disposed of with a paper shredder, so I figured I was pretty good at this online dating thing. Not exactly a resume skill, but a skill nonetheless. And although finding a husband seemed pretty unlikely since all my eggs were vested for retirement with a down payment on a condo in Florida, I thought I would keep trying.

So I met him online.

We talked for a few weeks online and over the phone. I had a three week rule before I would meet guys in person. I'm super safety conscious, verging on paranoid. This weeded out men looking for one-night stands and gave me time to screen them for red flags.

Future Dh was different from the start. I was pretty sure he was all wrong for me, but he was very nice. I had some serious reservations.
1. He told me up front that he was disabled and didn't work.
2. He lived with his mother.
3. He was such a mild temperament and I wasn't sure that he would have what it took to "keep me in line".
4. Catholic upbringing.
5. He didn't drive.

Even before our first date, I had already decided he was destined for the friend zone, but I decided one little date wouldn't hurt.

I pulled up to the Chili's and this HUGE man was standing outside. (Sidenote: Future Dh is 6'7" tall and his shoulders are almost that broad. *Imagine a doorway with a head.) It was November, and he was wearing shorts, white knee socks and tennis shoes, and an oversized sports t-shirt and a baseball cap. My immediate thought was that he looked like he had lost his daddy at the ballpark, minus the worn beloved stuffed monkey.

First date was painful. He barely spoke as he ate his dinner. When he suggested the date continue after dinner with a movie, I internally groaned. I didn't want to be rude, but I really wanted to go home and I didn't want to risk my safety by letting him ride in my car on the first date. After looking him over and having that same picture of the young boy at the ballpark with the missing monkey, I decided I would be safe and go to a movie with him.

We decided to see Flight with Denzel Washington, which we would both decide was a horrible movie. It was an old theater with the old style chairs with the seats that fold up when you stand. The only two seats together were next to a wall. I decided to go in first and take the seat next to the wall. I step on the feet and hands of 54 angry people to get to my wall seat and attempt to sit down. My seat is broken. Lopsided. Might not be attached on one side. I decide to tough it out. Then the human doorway sits down. I now am occupying approximately a 3 inch space. I quickly realize that proximity might encourage some kind of intimacy like hand holding, so I decide that I had to find a way to create space between us. I needed distance. Fortunately, due to accident in a lab years ago, I was able to use my suction cup fingers and other spidy skills to climb the wall enough to create the necessary buffer between myself and the doorway man. Crisis averted.

The ride to take him home was filled with polite, but pointed references to a wonderful tropical life together in the friend zone where there's always a seat or two between us in theaters.
Good date. See ya.
(To be continued...)